“Greetings, my friend. You are interested in the unknown. The mysterious. The unexplainable. That is why you are here. And now for the first time, we are bringing you the full story of what happened. We are giving you all the evidence, based only on the secret testimony of the miserable souls who survived this terrifying ordeal. The incidents, places… My friend, we cannot keep this a secret any longer. Can your heart stand the shocking facts of the true story of…” the making of The Room?

Leading up to the release of The Disaster Artist, James Franco’s comedic account of the making of the 21st century’s truest bona fide cult movie The Room, many have understandably drawn comparisons to Tim Burton’s masterpiece Ed Wood. Like Ed Wood, The Disaster Artist seems to say to us out of the gate, “Look, we know that you know it didn’t really happen like this, but this is how it should have happened, so let’s just have some fun” (though in many ways it would appear that the true story was even stranger than what we see here). Also just like Ed Wood, The Disaster Artist benefits greatly from this approach.

Franco’s film even starts off similarly, first with actors giving testimonials about The Room followed by the introduction of our protagonists in a small local theater. It’s San Francisco in 1998 and young Greg Sestero (Dave Franco) is a struggling actor who is chided by his teacher (Melanie Griffith) for his lack of emotion through two months of class. When she looks to the rest of the room for an actor willing to bear his or her soul on stage, she has a taker in the mysterious Tommy Wiseau (James Franco). Bearing his soul and then some, Tommy’s strangeness doesn’t put off Greg who is astounded by Tommy’s commitment. The two become fast friends despite Tommy’s odd behavior as Tommy inspires Greg to come out of his shell.

Emboldened by one another they decide it’s time to take the leap and move to Hollywood to grab the film industry by the tail. As is so often the case however, they find nothing but failure for several months before Greg’s offhand comment about wishing they could just make their own movie lights a spark inside of Tommy. He’s going to write a movie for them to star in together. Something about real human behavior and it’s called…The Room.

In the 14 years since its release, The Room has become a midnight movie staple, playing to packed houses and building a legion of fans all over the world. People have a far greater love for it than many much better films (which of course most movies are). Its popularity and legacy are due to the fact that so many people have so much fun watching it. Most bad movies are boring. It’s a large part of what makes them so bad. People react differently to The Room however, in much the same way that people react to Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Outer Space and Glen or Glenda.

In the interest of full disclosure I’ll just tell you, I have never seen The Room outside of a handful of scenes. The idea of watching bad movies to mock them has never had much appeal for me. I only have so much time to watch movies and only so much money I can spend to see them so I would rather focus on things that I expect at least have a chance to be good. I feel like that approach has served me well for the most part, but… I now feel like it led me to miss out on the phenomenon of The Room as it started to pick up steam. What Franco and screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber (500 Days of Summer) capture beautifully- even for viewers like me who have never seen The Room– is what appeals to so many people about Wiseau’s opus. Wiseau’s mind is a strange and fascinating place as presented by Franco’s hilarious yet emotionally raw performance. It’s no wonder Wiseau would create something so watchable.

As long as we’re drawing comparisons to Ed Wood, Wiseau comes across like something of a combination of Johnny Depp’s Ed and Martin Landau’s Bela Lugosi. Tommy’s commitment to and belief in his dream and vision (in spite of his egregious lack of talent) are coupled with his volatile temper. Franco is incredibly funny while also showing us a man who we often can’t stand (or understand), but one we can have some sympathy for. Beyond that though, the greatest triumph of Franco’s performance and film overall is that it’s impossible not to have admiration for Tommy. Regardless of the end result, Tommy saw his vision through to the end, all with his own money (the source of which remains a mystery).

As Greg, Dave Franco really represents the audience as we share his frustrations. Making incredible sacrifices in both his professional and personal lives, Greg stands by Tommy through it all and Dave Franco lets us in to see why. The real life brothers playing off of each other make us forget that’s what they are and lets us see instead the brotherhood forged between these two decidedly unlikely friends. The portrayal of this friendship is ultimately the strongest element of The Disaster Artist and what makes it more than just the chronicling of a famously terrible movie.

The rest of the standout cast includes Seth Rogen, Alison Brie, Paul Scheer, Josh Hutcherson, and Jacki Weaver as people who react to Tommy as the vast majority of us almost certainly would upon meeting him. Understandably, their experience working with him is a largely unpleasant one, but what they couldn’t have possibly seen at the time is what it was in service of: a work of art that would make its mark upon the world in the most unique of ways. Say what you will about Tommy Wiseau or The Room, but how many filmmakers or films are worthy of getting their own- largely affectionate- movie made about them? It’s a short list but it includes Edward D. Wood, Jr. and Tommy Wiseau.

Citizen Kane. Casablanca. Lawrence of Arabia. Dr. Strangelove. Films considered by virtually all movie buffs to be amongst the greatest ever made. Classics. But there are so many wonderful movies that for one reason or another have fallen through the cracks and don’t get the recognition they truly deserve. In this new series I will be writing about and hopefully encouraging people to discover the classics that they’ve been missing. Movies like Bad Day at Black Rock, Hud, and L.A. Story just to name a few. I’ll be looking at the film, the era in which it was released, and other popular movies released in that era. For the first entry I’m writing about one of my favorite movies ever made and one that makes me laugh no matter how many times I see it, Albert Brooks’ Real Life.

…

The 1999-2000 TV season introduced American audiences to two shows that would change television forever. While so called “reality television” was nothing new, shows like Fox’s Cops and MTV’s The Real World were outliers. Major networks would air re-runs of scripted dramas and sitcoms all summer long, with very little original programming running between the end of May and the beginning of September. But as one millennium gave way to another, ABC’s Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (a game show but one that emphasized human drama more than something like Jeopardy!) and CBS’s Survivor broke through to become primetime smashes. This would prove to be anything but a fad with reality shows quickly becoming ubiquitous and remaining that way 18 years on. It would have only made sense for a comedian turned filmmaker to satirize the format around say, 2002. But why bother? Albert Brooks had already done it to perfection. In 1979.

Inspired by the 1973 12-part PBS documentary series An American Family, Brooks directed the film, co-writing it with Monica Johnson and Harry Shearer. In fact the film opens with the text of a quote by anthropologist Margaret Mead who described An American Family, “as new and as significant as the invention of drama or the novel…a new way in which people can learn to look at life, by seeing the real life of others interpreted by the camera.” Setting up the documentary style of Real Life the text describes the film as, “the next step. It documents not only the life of a real family, but of the real people who came to film that family, and the effect they had on each other.”

Brooks stars as a fictionalized, high-strung version of himself. A man thrilled to be embarking on a great experiment to film the lives of a real American family for one year. That lucky family happens to be the Yeagers from Arizona. Warren (Charles Grodin) is a veterinarian who’s very excited to be a part of the project. His wife Jeanette (Francis Lee McCain, Gremlins) however, and their two children are not so sure about being followed around with cameras for the next twelve months.

Albert is confident though. After all, the movie will be filmed with the unobtrusive Ettinauer 226XL, a camera that is worn by its operator like a space helmet. He proudly boasts of the Ettinauer’s, “omni-directional microphones,” and that it, “needs no special lighting and it uses no film.” With the real Brooks predicting the future yet again, Albert adds, “All picture and sound information is recorded digitally.” Putting a button on his description of the Ettinauer, Albert says with great satisfaction, “Only six of these cameras were ever made. Only five of them ever worked. We had four of those.” That line and the delivery of it are signature Brooks. Coming from stand-up comedy, Brooks carefully considers each and every dry word. Each one has a purpose. And it’s not simply the words themselves. It’s the order they’re spoken in and the inflection he brings to each individual one to maximize the line’s comic effect. This is hand-crafted comedy from a master on the subject.

With Warren on board as the project begins, the rest of the Yeager family reluctantly attempts to make the best of the situation. But despite the “unobtrusive” Ettinauer-wearing cameramen and Albert living all the way… across the street from the family, the constant awareness of being filmed at every moment can’t help but alter their behavior resulting in what one psychologist describes to Albert as, “a false reality.” It doesn’t take long for things to completely unravel for the Yeagers, for Albert, and for the production of the movie itself with the head of the studio insisting the film needs Robert Redford.

I’ve written about more than one mockumentary for this site and of course that’s largely due to the pervasiveness of the format. But Real Life has always felt like a little bit of a different animal to me, partially because of it being so far ahead of its time but also due to the lack of “talking head” interview segments. This fits Brooks’ style of humor though. He’s not terribly interested in jokes or letting the camera run for 15 minutes to allow Grodin, McCain, or himself to improvise, something that could have easily become self-indulgent. He finds comedy in people and the way in which they seem to almost inevitably embarrass themselves if they know they’re on camera. I would be very surprised to learn that there was any improvisation in the film. As noted above, Brooks is such a comedic craftsman that it’s hard to imagine him leaving things to chance or leaving potential laughs on the table because a word wasn’t pronounced just so. Plus the whole cast does an excellent job of staying in character from first frame to last. Nobody breaks character in pursuit of what they might believe to be a bigger joke with Brooks being smart enough to know that those jokes would ring false.

Real Life was released in an era where the biggest comedies tended to be on the broad side. The period between 1978 and 1980 saw the release of Animal House, The Jerk, Caddyshack, The Blues Brothers, and Airplane. I happen to like all of those movies a lot (particularly The Jerk) but it shows just how different Real Life was for a comedy of its time. The end of the film seems to be Brooks acknowledging that his movie won’t have the same kind of widespread acceptance as the more popular comedies of the time. “The audience loves fake,” a harried Albert tells his cameraman in the film’s closing moments. “They crave fake.” As he desperately tries to come up for an ending to his documentary Albert says, “There’s no law that says, ‘Start real, can’t end fake.’ What are they gonna do? Put me in movie jail? It’s a fake jail!” he declares, his voice raising to a high pitch. Again, it’s the delivery of the line that really makes it. It’s become one of my all-time favorite film quotes. This all leads to an ending worthy of Gone with the Wind. At least that’s what Albert tells himself.

Brooks would go on to make many more terrific comedies through the ‘80s and ‘90s, the best of which being 1985’s Lost in America which is my choice for a companion film. Always underappreciated, Brooks is one of the few comedians truly worthy of being called a genius. Really, that shouldn’t be surprising for a man born with the name Albert Einstein.

Christine McPherson (Saoirse Ronan, Brooklyn) is desperate to get through her senior year of high school as it begins in the fall of 2002. She wants nothing more than to escape the boredom of being a teenager in Sacramento and to fly away to college in New York. Maybe that’s why she insists that people (including her own mother) call her “Lady Bird.” Written and directed by Greta Gerwig (an actress long favored by Noah Baumbach), Lady Bird is as much if not more an exploration of the complicated dynamics of a mother-daughter relationship as it is a coming-of-age tale. It was hardly surprising to learn that Gerwig’s original title for the film was Mothers and Daughters.

Coming from a lower middle class family that she jokes is from “the wrong side of the tracks,” (though there are in fact train tracks involved), “Lady Bird” doesn’t connect with her Catholic education at school and she is regularly butting heads with her critical mother, Marion (Laurie Metcalf) at home. Her best friend Julie (Beanie Feldstein) excels at Lady Bird’s worst subject, math, while she also lands the lead in the school’s fall musical, which Lady Bird can only get a small part in. Things look up for Lady Bird, however, when she hits it off with Danny (Lucas Hedges, Manchester By the Sea) during play rehearsals and she starts to set her sights on applying for financial aid to universities in New York, a secret between Lady Bird and her more understanding father, Larry (Tracy Letts). Marion doesn’t want Lady Bird going to school any farther away than UC-Davis.

The tone of Lady Bird is a bit unusual and at times it can be difficult to tell where Gerwig is going for a laugh. Typically this would be a problem but it actually works here. There is a quirky awkwardness throughout much of the film that feels like real life instead of being manufactured for a movie. Often the moments that made me laugh the hardest were met with silence by others in the audience I saw it with, while some scenes got big laughs from others that just hit me as too real and painful for me to laugh at. Whatever responses different moments elicit from different members of its audience, Lady Bird is incredibly effective at engaging its audience. It is that sense of reality and honesty that is undeniable throughout the movie.

The lead character herself could have felt too much like a screenwriter’s creation but, thanks to Gerwig’s script and Ronan’s performance, Lady Bird is a decidedly believable teenage girl. Lady Bird is trying to reinvent herself from day to day, sometimes saying and doing things just for the sake of being edgy, which is of course classic teenage behavior. If the writing or performance had been different this could have made the character and ultimately the film insufferable. Thankfully though even if we might shake our heads at Lady Bird at times we can’t help but continue to root for her and stay on her side, because we know we’re shaking our heads at our teenage selves just a little bit. Her vulnerability and her inner strength are both present at every moment which is a real testament to Ronan’s wonderful work here.

Gerwig really does get a lot right about being a teenager who wants to leave a boring town and about going to Catholic school. I went to a Catholic elementary school from kindergarten through second grade in the late ‘80s which granted is not quite the same as a Catholic high school in the early aughts but still, the atmosphere feels just right. The faculty (which includes nuns and priests) is not as strict and humorless as one might think – no one gets wrapped on the knuckles with a ruler – and the kids are just normal kids. You wear a uniform and you say a prayer before the Pledge of Allegiance but math and English are still math and English and your classmates can be just as kind or as cruel as they are anyplace else. Gerwig and the ensemble cast bring Lady Bird’s school to terrifically realistic life.

What makes Lady Bird so special though beyond being a very good coming-of-age movie is its portrayal of the lead character’s relationship with her mother. The transition between being at each other’s throats to sharing excitement over a thrift store dress find is instantaneous. The scenes between Ronan and Metcalf are beautifully nuanced and incredibly genuine. Each will almost certainly garner well-deserved Actress and Supporting Actress Oscar nominations respectively. More than that however, these performances will leave a lasting mark on those who watch them.

Lady Bird is a gem of a movie and one of the best of 2017. Highly recommended.

Ridley Scott’s 1982 classic Blade Runner has become one of the most debated films ever made. Film buffs debate which cut of the film is best and they debate whether or not Deckard (Harrison Ford) is a human or a replicant. Where viewers come down on the Deckard question can depend in large part on which version of the movie they prefer. Even the director and star have disagreed about it for decades with Scott insisting, “He is definitely a replicant,” while Ford played the role believing his character to be human. 35 years later and 10 years after the release of Blade Runner: The Final Cut, Ford is back as Deckard while the question still looms.

Set 30 years after the original film, Blade Runner 2049 shows that things have only gotten worse for the world (or at least Los Angeles) since 2019. While this is a film that raises far more questions than it answers, it tells us in its opening moments that K (Ryan Gosling), a LAPD “blade runner,” is in fact a replicant. In a time when replicants are easier to spot than they used to be, K is greeted with open hostility both at the precinct and at his apartment building.

One of the elements that makes Blade Runner 2049 so fascinating is how, despite the mystery surrounding so much of its story and its world, it is unambiguously giving us a protagonist who is not human. Screenwriters Hampton Fancher and Michael Green and director Denis Villeneuve (Arrival) choose to show us many private moments with a character we know isn’t “real.” As a result, audience members can question themselves about why they may or may not care about K the way they would any other “real” fictional character. It is comforting to know that even now, a big budget Hollywood sequel can get audiences to ask this kind of philosophical question, as we wonder who is worthy of our sympathy and why. Beyond that, it gets us thinking about how we would view and treat replicants were they to become a reality. It’s a smart decision on the part of the filmmakers to make K’s identity as a replicant clear because it speaks to the heart of what Blade Runner 2049 is exploring thematically.

The other reason it’s smart is that it sets this sequel off immediately in its own direction. While this is a film that could only take place in the world established by the original Blade Runner, it has a unique feel of its own. Yes, it is another detective story set largely in a rainy Los Angeles, but the future noir look of the first movie has given way to a universe that is brighter and more metallic. While society has continued to break down, structures have become more polished. The bright, shiny interiors of the LAPD station K works in suggest the sense of order the department is trying to project even as the city deteriorates around them.

Saying much more about the story would be to give away major plot points that the film’s advertising campaign wisely went to great lengths to keep under wraps. Suffice it to say that Jared Leto’s Niander Wallace has picked up where the now defunct Tyrell Corporation left off in the manufacturing of replicants and that K eventually needs help from “the old blade runner” himself to solve his case, while maybe answering some other major questions along the way.

Blade Runner 2049 is a film that demands and – I have no doubt – will reward repeat viewings. I suspect it is the sort of movie where its original reviews will be fascinating to revisit years from now as well. Like the original, this should inspire lengthy examinations decades down the line, written by people who will have seen the film numerous times over several years, knowing every frame inside and out. These writers will also have the benefit of not needing to worry about spoilers. I would like to be one of them.

This is no ordinary movie, either to experience or digest. You really do owe it to yourself to see it in the theater to fully appreciate the most beautifully shot film made in a long time. Not surprisingly Roger Deakins (The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford, Fargo, Skyfall) is the director of photography and he may have outdone himself here. The film’s production designer Dennis Gassner has worked alongside Deakins many times (Skyfall and several Coen Brothers’ films) and together they’ve created a deeply immersive, visually jaw-dropping world for Villeneuve to tell a remarkable story in. The only film in 2017 to rival it as a cinematic experience is Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk.

Not to be overlooked is the strong emotional component of Blade Runner 2049, handled terrifically by Villeneuve and his cast. In the original movie it was surprisingly the villain, replicant Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) who really gave the film its heart (which is especially apparent in The Final Cut). One could argue that his “tears in the rain” monologue just before his death is the single biggest reason why we remember Blade Runner for more than its visuals 35 years later. In 2049, Deckard’s storyline packs more emotional punch than his did in the first movie. In a smaller role than we’re used to seeing him in, Harrison Ford delivers one of the finest performances of his career here. Whether Deckard is a human or a replicant, he has experienced real loss and pain. Gosling as K meanwhile projects a deep sense of sadness. He seems to know that not being human means there are things that he will never be able to experience, lamenting the fact that he knows his childhood memories are fictional implants.

I am not going to boldly proclaim one way or the other that this is or is not a stronger film than the first Blade Runner. Right now I couldn’t say. Only time and repeat viewings will tell. But that’s not really what matters. Denis Villeneuve has made a sequel to a classic movie that is excellent in its own right and that thankfully does not lean on audience nostalgia. Blade Runner 2049 is far better than we ever could have reasonably hoped for and for now at least, that should be enough.

One of the more difficult things to pull off in a film is a successful shift in tone. It’s even more difficult when a filmmaker shifts back and forth between tones throughout a movie. Altered Spirits attempts to do this several times over the span of 90 minutes but unfortunately it just leaves the viewer repeatedly asking, “What does this movie want to be?”

It’s hard to tell from the film’s first few scenes just how seriously it’s taking itself. First, we’re introduced to two men and a woman who appear to possibly be pirates as they find an unconscious young man lying in the desert. They speak in grandiose terms of a portal being opened before we cut to the young man we just saw in a car with three friends. He and his pals share some banter as they drive out to a sweat lodge. It hints at a possible twist on the opening of a “cabin in the woods” style horror movie. Four people in their twenties have a lighthearted conversation before they arrive at their destination and the chaos begins. This could have been effective had the banter been stronger. This ends up being an indicator of really the entire movie that follows.

Written by Peter Bohush (who also directs), Joseph Medina, and Stephen Weese (who also stars as Scott), Altered Spirits tries to do many things but doesn’t really do any of them particularly well. The early comedic tone falls almost entirely flat before giving way to the much darker meat of the film, in which the friends find themselves separated, all forced to relive the worst moments of their lives. These scenes work a bit better taken on their own but following the goofy humor of the earlier scenes and intercut with more attempted comedy focused on the charlatan that runs the sweat lodge (Richard Epcar), they feel like they belong in a different movie. Imagine if Sam Raimi had tried to fuse Army of Darkness and A Simple Plan (two wonderful films that have decidedly different aims) into one movie and you get some idea of where Altered Spirits goes wrong in its second act.

Altered Spirits is a low-budget film and of course there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s even the sort of thing that a filmmaker could use to his or her advantage and if this had really committed to one tone and done it well then this movie could have worked. As it is, the writing is pretty clunky and the actors are largely inexperienced working on camera. (A number of the leads have extensive anime voice credits to their names.) As a result the performances tend to be either a little too big or a little too small. Allyson Floyd who plays a reporter looking into strange goings on at the sweat lodge is an exception and gives a solid performance. Unfortunately her role is relatively small but had the film been focused on her, Altered Spirits would have at least had a pretty good lead performance going for it. Epcar’s greasy fraud schtick almost works and in a more consistent movie with better lines for him to deliver his character and performance could have been a lot of fun. One can almost imagine the writers picturing Bruce Campbell as they worked, again bringing it around to Army of Darkness.

There is a sense of ambition here that is admirable but unfortunately that ambition leads to a messy film that tries to be too many things at once and relies more heavily on its low-budget visual effects than it should. It’s clear that everyone involved cares and if nothing else, Altered Spirits is not boring. Sadly, the film still leaves much to be desired.

Two of the more popular comedy subgenres of the past couple of decades have been mockumentaries and dark comedies about hitmen. With Killing Gunther (now available on demand and coming to theaters on October 20), writer and first-time director Taran Killam (Saturday Night Live) is combining the two with fantastic results. It’s a movie that wouldn’t work nearly as well in the hands of many filmmakers who might have concocted a similar premise. However, Killam displays a great understanding of tone and pacing throughout and perhaps most importantly of all, knows how to carry the idea all the way through to the end. As a result, an idea that sounds like it would work better as a short than a feature makes for a very funny 93 minute film.

In addition to writing and directing, Killam stars as Blake, a hitman who hires a documentary crew to follow his efforts to kill the legendary hitman known only as Gunther. Whether it’s professional jealousy or something more personal, Blake has had enough of Gunther’s reign as the world’s greatest hitman and he’s not alone. Other professional killers are all too happy to join Blake, including (amongst others) explosives-loving Donnie (Bobby Moynihan, SNL), Yong (Aaron Yoo), who kills only with poison, and Sanaa (Hannah Simone, New Girl), the world’s deadliest hitwoman. With no one knowing even what Gunther looks like, Blake and his team will have their work cut out for them.

What may be most surprising about Killing Gunther, especially coming from a first time director, is that it does so many different things well. The performances are all very funny because everyone inhabits their characters to the fullest. No one goes outside of their character for an easy laugh which could be tempting with this kind of ensemble comedy. Killam and the rest of his cast all display a keen understanding of who their characters are and that grounds the movie through some very silly, over the top sequences in which Gunther predictably gets the better of them. No matter how outlandish the on screen action may be, we’re so invested in the characters and their personal stories that we’re willing to go along for the ride, whatever Killam the director throws at us. And believe me, he throws some utterly ridiculous things our way. Thankfully, virtually all of it lands.

Killam is even able to get us on board with the idea of professional killers being willing to be filmed by a documentary crew. A couple of the biggest laughs in the movie come early on as characters are at first shocked and confused by the sight of a camera crew before quickly being happy to participate in the film. It’s part of what makes Killing Gunther feel different from something like a Christopher Guest movie or The Office.

The selling point in the trailer and on the poster for Killing Gunther was the casting of Arnold Schwarzenegger as Gunther. It becomes clear early on in the film that we won’t see Arnold for a while and that we probably won’t be seeing him that much when we finally do. However, when he finally does arrive, it is absolutely worth the wait and not one frame with him is wasted. What makes him so funny here, in honestly one of the better performances he’s ever given, is that he totally understands the joke but neither he nor Killam lean on it too hard. There aren’t many direct references to his movies but the ones that pop up are woven in incredibly cleverly. Not content to try to get a laugh with a lazy, “Hey, remember this?” approach, Killam gets references and quotes into the film in ways that feel naturally conversational.

Killing Gunther is smart and goofy at the same time, featuring a wonderful ensemble cast, and written and directed by a confident first time filmmaker who has incredible promise for the future. With good comedies sadly being fewer and farther between these days, it’s exciting to see someone new with such a knack for it. I look forward to whatever he makes next and I hope this inventive comedy is embraced.

Like its title character, Ingrid Goes West is a movie that will be dismissed and rejected by many. What many will understandably find difficult is that it defies easy categorization. Not content with simply being a dark comedy about a mentally and emotionally troubled young woman named Ingrid (Aubrey Plaza), it’s a film that dares to turn its cell phone camera back at us and we may not like what we see. From early on it feels reminiscent of Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy in that we in the audience may recognize parts of Rupert Pupkin or Ingrid Thorburn in people we know or maybe, to our discomfort, in ourselves.

After not being invited to the wedding of a woman she follows on Instagram, Ingrid arrives at the reception to spray the bride’s eyes with mace. After briefly getting treatment at a mental hospital, Ingrid quickly finds a new object to direct her unhealthy obsessions towards. 3000 miles from Ingrid’s Pennsylvania home is Taylor Sloane (Elizabeth Olsen), a young celebrity who appears to only be famous from the life she presents on social media with her pop artist husband Ezra (Wyatt Russell, 22 Jump Street). After Taylor responds to an overthought comment Ingrid makes on an Instagram post, Ingrid takes the entirety of the inheritance left to her by her recently deceased mother to move to Los Angeles to become Taylor’s best friend.

The first feature from director Matt Spicer, Ingrid Goes West is written by Spicer and David Branson Smith. What is most impressive about the film is the exact thing that will likely keep many from embracing it. Most filmmakers with this premise would have simply presented Ingrid as an unsympathetic psychopath for the audience to judge while Taylor would have been seen as the likable, unwitting victim for us to not only side with but relate to. Instead, without ever trying to justify any of Ingrid’s actions or stalker mentality, Spicer and Smith show sensitivity to her deeply sad and troubled state.

For her part, Plaza is excellent as Ingrid. In her years on Parks and Recreation, Plaza provided depth to what could have been a funny but one note character to make April Ludgate something more. Here, she makes Ingrid a sympathetic character, not through trying to make her more likable but by allowing us to see where Ingrid’s mindset comes from. We see that while we may (certainly hopefully) not do the outrageous and often horrifying things she does, there’s a starting point that a great many of us will recognize. Ingrid doesn’t begin with a desire to hurt anybody, physically or emotionally. She is a lonely person who wants a friend and to feel accepted. While the movie certainly shows the dark side of social media and how easily people can use it to feed their obsessions, it’s more interested in human desires that were around long before Instagram and will exist long after that site’s users will have moved on to whatever’s replaced it.

Part of what keeps the audience on Ingrid’s side is we see just how much of a fraud Taylor is. While her husband is something of a clown, Ezra at least seems to be genuine and like Ingrid he has no use for Taylor’s horrendous brother Nicky (Billy Magnussen, Bridge of Spies). It’s been a while since a film has featured a character so punchable. The main difference between Ingrid and people like Taylor and Nicky is that while they all use people to make themselves feel more important, the Taylor’s and Nicky’s of the world use people they feel are beneath them to feel superior. They use people like Ingrid up and dispose of them when they find someone they’re more interested in. While Ingrid could ultimately get the professional help she really needs to become well-adjusted, Taylor and Nicky will remain awful people without a trace of self-awareness and will never realize that they need to change anything about themselves.

Only one character in the film truly accepts Ingrid for who she is and doesn’t seem interested in using anybody. Her landlord Dan (O’Shea Jackson Jr., Straight Outta Compton) is an aspiring screenwriter with a deep-seated love of all things Batman. He sees Ingrid’s oddness (which granted, can’t be missed), but all he asks is that she not bring any dogs into her apartment due to his allergies. Many of the film’s funniest and most memorable scenes are between Ingrid and Dan with Plaza and Jackson sharing an endlessly watchable chemistry.

Ingrid Goes West is not an easy movie to watch but it is a rewarding one for those willing to accept that it doesn’t stick to an easily identifiable tone or genre and more importantly, for those willing to take an honest look at themselves. It’s unique, uncomfortable, funny, dark, sad, and filled with human truth. The ending will not doubt be debated even amongst those who like the film. I’m still not sure how I feel about it and the message it may be sending but it’s a conversation worth having and maybe that’s the point. This is not a movie for everyone but it does have something to say to all of us that is worth hearing.

There is a lot to like about Steven Soderbergh’s self-proclaimed, “anti-glam version of an Ocean’s movie.” The cast is terrific and manages to have fun with southern stereotypes without openly mocking southerners. The plot is cleverly constructed yet breezy in the right way and there’s an emotional weight to the story of the Logan family and their supposed “curse” that works well. But there is one fatal flaw that Logan Lucky cannot overcome. The film asks its audience to believe that Jimmy Logan (Channing Tatum) could orchestrate a heist worthy of Danny Ocean but it never earns that belief from us. While Jimmy may be a smarter guy than people realize, it remains too much of a leap to get from there to him being a criminal mastermind. It is unfortunate because as I said, there is a lot to like here.

Jimmy Logan’s string of personal misfortunes began with a football injury that ended a flourishing career. Now years later as a result of the limp that left him with he’s lost his job as a construction worker at Charlotte Motor Speedway due to liability concerns. Things are no better in his personal life as his ex-wife Bobbie Joe (Katie Holmes) and her new husband Moody (David Denman, The Office) inform him they’ll be moving to Lynchburg, Virginia and taking his daughter Sadie (Farrah Mackenzie) with them. Desperate, Jimmy turns to his brother Clyde (Adam Driver) for help. Jimmy has a plan to rob the speedway using his knowledge of how the money is moved there during a weekend in which security will be light. To pull off the heist though, they’ll need the help of safecracker Joe Bang (Daniel Craig). Unfortunately his being in prison presents them with a problem that requires a clever solution. They also enlist the help of Joe’s dimwitted brothers Sam (Brian Gleeson) and Fish (Jack Quaid), and their own sister Mellie (Riley Keough), easily the smartest person on the makeshift crew.

Written by mysterious first time screenwriter Rebecca Blunt (who as of this review’s publication is rumored to possibly be Soderbergh’s wife Jules Asner or maybe even Soderbergh himself), Logan Lucky mixes the sensibility of Soderbergh’s Ocean’s films with the kind of dumb criminal comedies the Coen Brothers have perfected. While this provides plenty of fun characters and funny interplay- especially between Driver and Craig- it ends up being the biggest contributing factor to the movie’s central problem. A movie about dumb criminals doing stupid things and ruining their own heists through sheer ineptitude makes sense. On the other side of that, the intricately planned and brilliantly executed heist in Ocean’s Eleven feels plausible thanks to the internal logic that film sets up. Danny Ocean and his cohorts are career criminals. They’re essentially an all-star team of thieves with lifetimes of experience to their credit. With the exception of Joe Bang (who doesn’t do much in terms of the job’s planning), these are characters with very limited criminal histories and while Jimmy isn’t a dummy, he hardly seems capable of putting together something so elaborate. This is no fault of Tatum’s who does a fine job of making Jimmy feel like a true living, breathing person which helps ground the film.

Driver meanwhile is funny and human as the younger Clyde, a veteran who lost his hand in an explosion while serving in Iraq. Like her character, Keough helps keep things from coming unglued when they otherwise could have. It could have helped the film greatly to give her character Mellie a criminal background as well. If she and Jimmy had a history of doing jobs together it would have gone a long way towards making Logan Lucky’s internal logic much sturdier. Not surprisingly, the highlight of the cast though is Craig, who is great fun to watch.

A couple of other cast members don’t fare as well. Katharine Waterston does a fine job with her few scenes but there doesn’t really seem to be any reason for her character to be there. I suspect there may have been much more to her role initially but as the movie is already as long as it is (119 minutes), Soderbergh may have cut much of it out but because of one scene in particular he couldn’t remove her from the film entirely. That is pure speculation on my part but otherwise it’s hard to figure out why she’s even there. Seth MacFarlane meanwhile does not do nearly as good of a job as Waterston but his character feels every bit as pointless. Simply putting the creator of Family Guy in a silly wig and giving him a dubious British accent may be funny in and of itself for some but for the rest of us it’s just a distraction.

Given the genre and its pedigree, Logan Lucky is a movie I fully expected and wanted to love. While it is certainly very watchable and has several things going for it, the lack of foundation that would have made the robbery feel plausible is too much to overcome. It also drags out its third act in a rather awkward way. There’s a really good movie here with some simple tweaks. It’s too bad Soderbergh didn’t make them.

When your job as a writer is to look at film objectively, it’s important to not get hung up on nostalgia. Thankfully, I do pretty well with that. I might have thought a movie was wonderful as a 9-year old but if it doesn’t work for me now I can’t trick myself into still loving it and I know that I shouldn’t try. If I’m watching a film I loved as a kid now for the 37th time it’s because it still works for me and it works for me in an entirely different way than when I first saw it. I feel that it’s important to be clear about this so you understand where I’m coming from when I say that 1984’s Ghostbusters – a movie I loved almost as much as life itself after I got it on VHS for my 6th birthday in 1988 – is my favorite movie of all-time. I hope that you’re ready to believe me.

Ghostbusters wasn’t just a movie to me as a child. It was a world for my imagination to play in. If I wasn’t playing with the toys, I was running around with my backpack on and my Wiffle bat in hand to be my proton pack. I had a trap that my brother had built me out of a shoebox. At school my friends and I would re-enact the previous afternoon’s episode of The Real Ghostbusters during the morning recess. The only fictional world that had a bigger impact on me was Star Wars. But unlike Star Wars, Ghostbusters took place in the real world (relatively speaking), in the present day. Growing up to be a Ghostbuster seemed like an actual career option, certainly more so than being a Jedi anyway. Even if you’re someone who’s spent his or her whole life wishing you could be a Jedi, answer me this: Who seems like he’s having more fun? Luke Skywalker or Peter Venkman. Without question, being a Ghostbuster sounded far more appealing.

As for the film itself, between the ages of 6 and 10, I watched it the way kids that age watch movies. Repeatedly, obsessively. I knew every line, every music cue, and every deadpan Bill Murray look by heart. It was funny, it was exciting. It had everything. Ghostbusters was easily one of my most watched movies.

I grew older and as is so often the case with the movies we watch more times than we can count when we’re young, I didn’t see Ghostbusters again for several years. I had outgrown the toys, I was too old to run around with my Wiffle bat and backpack and shoebox trap. It wasn’t that I didn’t love the movie anymore but I had seen it probably upwards of 20 times by then and in a relatively short span. It was time to discover other things.

Several years passed and I became a full blown film fanatic. I looked at movies in a different way than I had as a child. My standards were higher, my tastes had changed. But when I watched Ghostbusters again on DVD at 19, I found that not only did it hold up, it was like seeing it for the first time. I understood jokes I had never understood before. “Why worry? Each of us is wearing an unlicensed nuclear accelerator on his back,” was at last hilariously funny to me. I finally knew to laugh when Egon says, “Sorry, Venkman. I’m terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought.” I was able to love and appreciate Ghostbusters without the element of nostalgia. This was a great movie, not one I was merely still trying to love because I’d grown up on it.

It really all came together for me though – my grown up sensibilities and my childhood memories – on a Sunday afternoon in November of 2007. It would be the first time I’d get to see the movie on the big screen. And this wasn’t just any big screen. This was a 70mm print at Seattle’s Cinerama. Judging from the condition of the film print it had almost certainly been playing in a packed theater somewhere on opening day, June 8, 1984.(Fun fact: It had the same release date as Gremlins.) Knowing that made me feel connected to all of the kids who had seen that movie for the first time 23 years before. And on that cloudy day I was in a house full of people who got it. Who knew and loved the movie just as I did. Several of them had no doubt played Ghostbuster just as I had as a child. For that hour and 45 minutes I was entranced.

That focus made me appreciate the screenplay and the performances in a way I never had before. Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis had written such well-defined characters and along with director Ivan Reitman, made this highest of high concepts feel grounded in a believable world. We saw Peter Venkman, Ray Stantz, and Egon Spengler begin as scientists working at a university, being thrown out onto the street, and taking out a ridiculous loan to start up a business in a building that, as Egon puts it, “should be condemned.” It made it all so plausible somehow.

The contrast between Ray’s childlike enthusiasm, Egon’s seriousness, and Peter’s wry world view was played to perfection by Aykroyd, Ramis, and Bill Murray, respectively. All three brought their best to the table, playing off of each other brilliantly. Aykroyd delivers scientific mumbo jumbo with unparalleled aplomb. Ray really is, as Peter puts it, “the heart of the Ghostbusters.”

Ramis meanwhile, is vastly underrated as Egon. It’s the way he uncomfortably steps out from behind Ray’s freshly turned on proton pack on the elevator, how he says, “I looked at the trap, Ray,” and how he awkwardly looks down at his mark in their low-budget TV commercial. Being a co-writer, Ramis knew every inch of the character and no one else could have played him as well. Any other actor, even a really good one, probably would have either played too hard for laughs or would have played it too flat, not finding any of the subtle choices Ramis did.

Then there’s the Man. Bill Murray had already become a comic superstar on Saturday Night Live and in movies like Caddyshack and Stripes. But this was the one. This was the movie that cemented his deadpan face onto the Mount Rushmore of American film comedy. For the past 33 years it’s not that kids have just wanted to be Peter Venkman. Kids and adults have wanted to be Bill Murray. Because everything he does in Ghostbusters is flawless. Because Peter “never studied” he’s less like a scientist and “more like a game show host.” Making him less of a committed man of science than Ray or Egon gives the audience someone to relate to from the start. Like a goofball Han Solo, Peter Venkman is the “regular guy” in the mix. But he’s not really a regular guy, is he? He’s a guy who gets to make a living chasing ghosts with his best friends and making brilliant wise cracks all day, every day. Who wouldn’t want to be Peter Venkman? Like the man who plays him, Venkman is made out of magic.

What’s striking is that there are no interchangeable lines of dialogue between the three leads. With so many gifted comic actors working together it would be easy to imagine- especially now- that the cast members would end up in a game of one-liner one-upmanship. That maybe Aykroyd would think, “Well, I haven’t said anything in a while and I just thought of a killer line,” only to have it not work because it’s not something that would make any sense coming from Ray. It’s really a Peter line. But that never happens. Everything that comes out of one of their mouths would only be said by the man who says it. The filmmakers’ attention to character detail didn’t stop with Peter, Ray, and Egon though. A lot of writers would have made Dana Barrett’s role a thankless one but without us investing in her the movie wouldn’t have worked. Dana is the anchor of the entire movie. Casting Sigourney Weaver in the part certainly didn’t hurt either. From her first appearance on screen she feels like a fully realized character. To paraphrase Ramis in the film’s audio commentary, she raised Murray’s game as an actor to make the romance between Dana and Peter work. And she absolutely makes us buy her possession by Zuul later in the film. Ghostbusters is a paranormal comedy but Weaver makes the stakes real.

It’s the other performances that make Ghostbusters such a rich experience as well. The everyman quality that Ernie Hudson brings to Winston, the guy the other three hire when business starts to become more than they can handle. Hudson’s role is relatively small, but absolutely essential. As paranormal events become more frequent they start to seem common place to the original three Ghostbusters even as the intensity rises. Winston reacts to these things the way an ordinary person would and he helps the film keep that foot in reality through its final hour.

It’s the exasperation and “bug eyes” of Annie Potts as their secretary, Janine. After Peter mocks her when she tells him that she hasn’t had a break in weeks she answers a call with a bitter, “Ghostbusters,whadda ya want?!” in a way anyone who has worked in customer service can relate to.

It’s the general despicable nature of EPA man Walter Peck, played to utter perfection by William Atherton. Atherton never overplays anything. Peck doesn’t enjoy being an unlikeable government tool; he’s just doing his job and is finding it incredibly frustrating to do. A dumber movie would have made him an outright villain. Instead it’s his clash of egos with Venkman that leads to his foolish and catastrophic order to shut down the ghost containment unit. It makes him feel like a real guy making a believable decision instead of somebody doing something the plot needs him to do.

Finally, it’s the film’s secret weapon, Rick Moranis. Given the freedom to write most of his character Louis Tully’s lines, Moranis is absolute gold as the accountant who lives down the hall from Dana and ends up possessed as “the Key Master.” Even in a movie as beloved as Ghostbusters, Moranis is often overlooked despite giving one of the funniest and best supporting performances of all-time. “Yes, have some!” is my favorite line in the entire movie and it’s entirely because of his delivery of it.

From top to bottom, Ghostbusters is a master class in screenwriting. In addition to the excellent characterizations, the story is perfectly constructed, and it could very well have the highest number of quotable lines in cinematic history. Aykroyd and Ramis should have at least been nominated for an Oscar for their screenplay but mainstream comedies almost never get that level of respect.

What’s most impressive about the entire film though is the magic trick Aykroyd and Ramis pulled along with Reitman. They blended comedy, the paranormal, science fiction, action, big special effects, and horror (the terror dog attacks on Dana and Louis always unnerved me as a kid, even though Louis’s was played primarily for laughs) into one package. Those things don’t normally go together. By all rights they shouldn’t work together. Attempting to put all of that into one movie should cause it to derail by the half hour mark and get progressively worse. But the results couldn’t have been any better. There isn’t one moment that doesn’t work in this movie. (Even some of the weaker effects shots have a charm to them.) What other film could have possibly pulled off a gigantic Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man rampaging through the streets of New York? Seriously, what other movie could make that work tonally?

Somehow it doesn’t really feel dated either. Yes, there’s the Ray Parker, Jr. theme along with the handful of other pop songs used but so much of the films is driven by that classic orchestral score from Elmer Bernstein. There aren’t that many “only in the ‘80s” fashion moments either. Ghostbusters isn’t so 1984 that we get caught up in it being a product of its decade. Whether Reitman knew it or not, he was making a timeless film.

Ever since I was first introduced to it so many years ago, Ghostbusters has been a movie near and dear to my heart. I loved it as an imaginative 6-year old who wanted to be a Ghostbuster. I love it now as a comedy fan and as a movie fanatic. Technically, artistically, and comedically, it’s my favorite film of all-time and I grow to love it more with each viewing and with each passing year.

For a companion piece, I recommend episode 14 of season 1 of The Real Ghostbusters, “Knock Knock.” Telling an original and far more compelling story than 1989’s Ghostbusters 2 in 22 minutes, “Knock Knock” mixes comedy and real character and emotional depth. This animated TV episode from 1987 is the most worthy successor to Ghostbusters there is.

At the start of David Leitch’s new Cold War action-packed spy thriller we are told that in November of 1989 the Berlin Wall came down but that, “This is not that story.” Instead, Atomic Blonde deals with MI6 agent Lorraine Broughton (Charlize Theron) and her efforts that same month to recover a microfilm which contains the identities of every active field agent in the Eastern Bloc. Lorraine is a stone cold killer paired with another MI6 agent in Berlin, David Percival (James McAvoy) to find the list and to kill a double agent known only as Satchel.

The main action of the film is told in flashback as Lorraine relates the events to her superior officer Eric Gray (Toby Jones) and to CIA agent Emmett Kurzfeld (John Goodman). The story she tells unfolds like a cross between an intricately woven John Le Carre work and a pulpier Ian Fleming James Bond novel. The screenplay by Kurt Johnstad (based on the graphic novel series The Coldest City by Antony Johnston and Sam Hart) pulls off the Fleming side much more ably, as the plot developments become needlessly complicated. This never really needed to be a movie that keeps us guessing but, if Johnstad wanted to make that a part of the screenplay, he could have done a better job of it.

For Leitch’s (uncredited as the co-director of the original John Wick) part, he excels at delivering fantastic action sequences and giving the film a strong (at times a bit too strong) sense of style. Atomic Blonde works best as an action-driven character piece for Theron. When Lorraine is pummeling KGB or Stasi agents in apartments and on staircases the movie soars. The fight scenes reveal character as Lorraine displays her ingenuity and ruthlessness in life or death situations. In a nine-minute long sequence with no discernible cuts (edits are cleverly hidden throughout), Leitch creates a mesmerizing fight scene which will be talked about for years to come. Theron gets the opportunity to shine not only in these scenes but in the quieter moments as well. Some have called Theron a “female James Bond” here but really there’s more nuance to Lorraine Broughton than there is to Bond. There’s a character with some depth and Theron brings that to light.

The ensemble cast does just fine but this is Theron’s movie and it adds up to being better than the majority of the films in the Bond series which it’s being compared to. The convoluted story turns are its biggest issue. Also, for a movie that relies heavily on its soundtrack Leitch’s song choices are largely uninspired. Don’t get me wrong, I love David Bowie and Queen’s “Under Pressure” but I never need to hear it in another movie again. “99 Luftballoons” by Nena and “Major Tom” by Peter Schilling have made numerous appearances on film and television soundtracks, as well. They’re great Cold War era songs but using them yet again is unimaginative.

It’s hard to say if there could be a sequel but I would welcome another outing for Charlize Theron as Lorraine Broughton if the right story idea came along. Setting this at the end of the Cold War could make that tricky as the character feels ideally suited to that time and place. Either way, between Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road and now Lorraine, Theron has proven she’s one of this era’s best action stars.

Atomic Blonde is held back by trying to be cleverer than it needs to be and not succeeding, but it delivers exactly what you’d hope in terms of a great action lead in Charlize Theron and its incredible fight sequences directed by David Leitch.